The Sakthi Folk Cultural Centre in Tamil Nadu, India, led by two progressive Tamil Catholic nuns, uses Tamil folk arts to build self-esteem and economic skills among young Dalit women (formerly known as outcastes or untouchables). Sakthi reclaims the degraded parai frame drum to re-humanize and empower the young women through the physical embodiment of confidence in performance and a regenerated cultural identity in a complex campaign against gender, class, and caste subjugation.

Join ASC for this joint event with local partners from Duquesne University, Carnegie Mellon University, the Fulbright Association, and Kelir Books. Sakthi Vibrations, an ethnomusicological documentary directed by Dr. Zoe Sherinian, seeks to reveal and analyze Sakthi's outstanding model for Dalit women's development, integrating folk arts performance with social analysis, microeconomic sustainability, self-esteem, and community development.

Dr. Sherinian is Professor of Ethnomusicology at the University of Oklahoma. She is an accomplished scholar in Tamil folk music, Dalit liberation theology, and intersections of gender and caste. Along with the featured documentary, she has also produced This is A Music: Reclaiming an Untouchable Drum (2011).